One Night in November
by LondonBelow
Summary: A car accident gives Roger time to reflect.


**Disclaimer:**I don't own it.

Roger Davis, sixteen, angry, and bleeding from a gash in his forehead, sat at a bus stop in the middle of a clear, cold night, waiting for the police.

_Shit._

The word repeated itself over and over again, each time bringing with it the images slurring together his future and past. That was it, really: shit. Everything in Roger's life was shit, and now it was all going to be. He no longer could tell himself-- teachers could no longer tell him-- that all he needed to do was get through the next two years, get out of high school, into college, out of town. They were wrong. Roger had proved them all wrong tonight.

_Shit._

Flashing before his eyes, shit was his dad taking a swing at him. Shit was black eyes, beer highs, lectures and false hopes. "Roger's such a bright boy. If he would apply himself to his schoolwork… look at these PSAT scores! And his English work displays a clear command of the English language as well as very mature conceptual thinking. If Roger worked his hard all the time…" Never understanding that Roger never worked. When an essay interested him, he bothered. When he felt something, he wrote it, otherwise why bother? Yet he kept passing grades, kept progressing from year to year and hoping the work would be more interesting this time.

_Shit._

It was the college booklets left on his desk and in his locker. It was sitting in a bus shelter waiting for the cops to take him to the station, waiting for the sirens that had rocked him to sleep when he was a baby. It was the way his mother always referenced "those Harper boys" and wondered how good boys went so wrong, and the way she would look at him, then sadly shake her head and look away, sighing, "Oh, Roger…"

Roger raised his eyes. Shards of thick glass lay strewn across the road, catching the moonlight, headlights. It was beautiful, starlight flickering across the streams of the city. Roger tried the words to a tune: "I watch my life in the moonlight/Scattered shards of broken city life/I want my life back/But my dad's a hard old bastard." Obviously, the last lines would be changed, but at that moment nothing expressed more Roger's feelings. He strummed at the air, imagining his guitar.

"Shit!"

The Chevy lay on its back like a beetle under a twelve-year-old's torture. Its wheels spun. The headlights shone out over the street. Roger barely remembered crawling through the window, but he must have: his arms was bleeding. _You really fucked up this time_, scoffed the voice in his head, half his father and half the deep, painful place inside him where his conscience slept.

Numb, Roger rose from the bench. He trembled, every nerve in his body quivering with fear, shock and worst of all guilt like a sharp punch to the gut. Roger crossed the quiet road and knelt beside the overturned Chevy, his heart racing. He needed to get inside. He needed to retrieve the Fender. Roger could survive anything, everything--school, home, the crash-- if he had his Fender. No other escapism compared.

Roger knew the door wouldn't open. The roof was so thoroughly crushed, he could no longer discern where the roof stopped and the door started. After taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, Roger lay on his back and squirmed through the front window. Carefully he wormed his way into the wreckage, praying, _Don't let it crumple on me, please let the Fender be okay, I don't know what I'd do without it. I'll fucking suicide myself. How d'you like that?_ Realizing he had just threatened God, Roger shook his head.

His fingers brushed the guitar case. "Yes!" He wriggled, bent his hips, and stretched his arm. The muscles in his shoulder protested. "Easy, easy," he told them, "nearly…" Roger's fingers closed on the handle of the guitar's carrying case. "Yes! Yes!" He pulled it towards him, up and into the front seat. With the guitar resting on his chest, Roger wormed backwards, out of the Chevy.

He took a deep breath of fresh air, shivered, and began to sob dryly. It was all right. The Fender was safe. Roger was safe. It was all right. He laughed.

"Sir, I'm gonna need you to stand up and step away from the vehicle please."

"Oh, shit."

Roger spent the night in jail and the next six months working off a fine--underage drinking, driving while intoxicated. Little did his parents know, 'working off' to Roger meant standing on streetcorners, playing his piper's tune. He never completely paid them back for the car, because shortly after Roger's seventeenth birthday the Fender took him to bright lights and booze and drugs, and when he did look back, Roger attributed his later life to that night in November, when an accident taught him just how bad he could be.

END!

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